The Willson Center co-hosted “Coastal Thinking: A Conversation” on Sept. 26 at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina’s Research Triangle. Video of the panel discussion, chaired by Willson Center Director Nicholas Allen, is available now on the NHC’s website. The panelists were Hester Blum (Penn State), Margaret Cohen (Stanford), Ryan Emanuel (NC State) and Killian Quigley (University of Sydney).

The event was part of the Coasts, Climates, the Humanities, and the Environment Consortium, a partnership of the University of Georgia, Louisiana State University, the University of Florida, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The University of Georgia has committed to renew its membership in the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru), a partnership of more than 40 institutions aligned to support interdisciplinary research, curricula, programs and creative practice between the arts, sciences and other disciplines. UGA joined the alliance in 2016 and hosted its national conference in November 2018.

“The University of Georgia’s membership in the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities underscores our commitment to fostering innovation in the arts while promoting a culture of interdisciplinary collaboration,” said Marisa Pagnattaro, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Chair of the UGA Arts Council.

The membership in a2ru is managed through a Willson Center Research Cluster that includes Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE), an interdisciplinary initiative for advanced research in the arts at UGA. Earlier this year, ICE Artistic Director Mark Callahan was a co-principal investigator on a nearly $500,000 Innovations in Graduate Education grant to UGA faculty members from the National Science Foundation for the project “Applying Creative Inquiry to Enhance Imaginative and Collaborative Capacity in STEM.”

The Willson Center and the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences are offering travel support of up to $1,000 for faculty or doctoral students presenting papers at the Council for European Studies annual conference. The conference, whose theme is “Europe’s Past, Present, and Future: Utopias and Dystopias,” will be held in Reykjavik, Iceland, June 22-24, 2020. More information about the conference and about the proposal of individual papers can be found here. Proposals may be submitted until Tuesday, October 15, 2019. Participants will be notified of the Committee’s decisions by December 15.

There are limited funds available, so applicants are encouraged to consider all travel funds that might be available to UGA faculty and doctoral students in support of their proposals. Once you submit your proposal to the CES and receive their acknowledgement, please forward that acknowledgment to us by email, along with a scan of your proposal. Later, in November or December, after the CES has accepted your proposal, please send us that acceptance. Send both emails to Karen Coker at kcoker@uga.edu.

For questions, please contact Franklin College Associate Dean Martin Kagel at mkagel@uga.edu or (706) 542-2840. The University of Georgia is an institutional member of the CES.

The Willson Center welcomed author Michael Ondaatje to the University of Georgia as the 2019-2020 Delta Visiting Chair for Global Understanding. Ondaatje, whose 1992 novel The English Patient was awarded the “Golden Booker” prize in 2018 as the best English-language novel of the past 50 years, visited UGA and Athens October 24-25 for a slate of public events and informal conversations with college and high school students.

Ondaatje’s main public event was an Oct. 24 reading and conversation in the UGA Chapel, followed by a meet-and-greet reception on the lawn outside the Chapel. On Ondaatje attended a public reception and book signing at Ciné, with sales by Avid Bookshop. Both events were free and open to the public. During his two-day visit, Ondaatje also met with students in classes at both UGA and Clarke Central High School.

Born in Sri Lanka, Ondaatje spent his late childhood in England and has lived in Canada since 1962. He is best known for his novels, including Coming Through Slaughter (1976), In the Skin of a Lion (1987), Anil’s Ghost (2000), Divisadero (2007), and most recently Warlight (2018), which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

The English Patient won the Man Booker, awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom, then was chosen for the Golden Booker from among the first 50 years of winners of the prize. The book is a kaleidoscopic tale of four characters ensconced in a bombed-out Italian villa near the end of World War II, its perspective constantly shifting through their separate and shared pasts and present in a densely layered exploration of the subjectiveness of identity and the personal resonance of history. A 1996 film adaptation, directed by Anthony Minghella and starring Juliette Binoche, Ralph Fiennes, Willem Dafoe, Naveen Andrews, and Kristen Scott Thomas, won nine Academy Awards.

The Willson Center presented a free screening of The English Patient Oct. 16 at Ciné.

In addition to his novels, Ondaatje has published numerous acclaimed collections of poetry including There’s a Trick With a Knife I’m Learning To Do, The Cinnamon Peeler, and Handwriting, as well as a memoir of his childhood, a book of interviews with the film editor Walter Murch, and a critical analysis of the prose and poetry of Leonard Cohen. He also directed a series of documentary films in the 1970s.

The Delta Visiting Chair for Global Understanding, established by the Willson Center through the support of The Delta Air Lines Foundation, hosts outstanding global scholars, leading creative thinkers, artists, and intellectuals who engage with audiences on and off the UGA campus through lectures, seminars, discussions, and other community events. The Delta Chair program aims to foster conversations that engage with global perspectives through the humanities and arts.

The chair is founded upon the legacy of the Delta Prize for Global Understanding, which from 1997-2011 was presented to individuals – including Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ted Turner, Desmond Tutu, and Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter – whose initiatives promoted world peace by advancing understanding and cooperation among cultures and nations.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a $150,000 two-year grant to pilot a consortium of four research institutions and their public partners to study coasts, climates and the environmental humanities. The Coasts, Climates, the Humanities, and the Environment Consortium (CCHEC) is a partnership of the University of Georgia, Louisiana State University, the University of Florida, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as an alliance of regional stakeholders.

“The humanities are deeply connected to the University of Georgia’s commitment to coastal communities and marine research,” said Nicholas Allen, Abraham Baldwin Professor in Humanities and director of the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts at UGA, who is the principal investigator of the grant. “This collaboration will allow us to partner with other leading research institutions to think locally about challenges on a planetary scale in a new and exciting phase of humanities exploration.”

Research into the diversity and complexity of coastal zones and cultures through the medium of environmental humanities approaches is growing rapidly in the context of climate instability. CHECC engages the sea and land grant missions of its member institutions via two initial clusters: “Coasts, Archives and Climates” and “Coastal Futures and the Public Humanities.”

The two clusters will engage diverse community groups, students, and faculty in projects that study the environmental history and impacts of storms and tidal waters on a series of specific locations. Each cluster will integrate archival research with public engagement in order to create humanities-informed models of understanding for contemporary and emerging challenges.

“Science has alerted society to the slow-moving change that is unfolding around us,” said Craig E. Colten, Carl O. Sauer Professor in the department of geography and anthropology at Louisiana State University. “This consortium will address the complex roles of society and culture in responding. A diverse team of humanities scholars, whose institutions span the eastern seaboard and gulf coast, will explore the underlying social values and meanings of nature-society relationships and how they relate to our ability to confront environmental change.”

Members of CHECC will have their first meeting at the National Humanities Center on September 26, 2019. The meeting will conclude with a public conversation at 4 p.m. on “Coastal Thinking” between four leading environmental humanities scholars: Hester Blum of Penn State University, Margaret Cohen of Stanford University, Ryan Emmanuel of North Carolina State University, and Killian Quigley of the University of Sydney. Allen, of UGA, will chair the discussion.

“This opportunity to collaborate institutionally has the potential to transform individual partnerships into ongoing pipelines between our institutions and communities,” said Elizabeth Engelhardt, interim Senior Associate Dean for Fine Arts and Humanities and John Shelton Reed Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC-Chapel Hill. “Moreover, the issues we are discussing demand that we work to scale. The problems are large; our partnerships need to be equally ambitious. This effort promises to be.”

The Willson Center invites nominations from faculty and students for the 2020-21 Delta Visiting Chair. The Delta Visiting Chair for Global Understanding, established by the Willson Center through the support of The Delta Air Lines Foundation, hosts outstanding global scholars, leading creative thinkers, artists, and intellectuals. One aim of the program is to foster conversations in our community that engage with global perspectives through the humanities and arts.

Nomination:
Any UGA faculty or student (with a faculty sponsor) is eligible to make a nomination. Delta Visiting Chair nominees have included Man Booker Prize winners, Tate Prize winners, and holders of Guggenheim and other fellowships as well as individuals with comparable distinctions.

Submission:
Nominations (two-page maximum) should be submitted in Word or PDF form to the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts at wcha@uga.edu. Please address any questions to this email. Deadline: September 2.

• Nominations should include a brief paragraph that speaks to the achievements of the individual being nominating and how that individual’s visit to campus would bring attention to the arts and/or humanities in a global context.
• Please also include a brief biographical summary of the individual or a link to a biographical statement. Supporting materials can include links to websites, images, or video. Please do not include attachments.
• Nominations from students should be reviewed by a faculty sponsor in advance. Students should copy their faculty sponsor when submitting their nomination.

Selection:
Nominations will be considered by a committee comprised of the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts Faculty Advisory Board for ranking, with final selection in consultation with the Office of Research. The nomination will be submitted to the University System Board of Regents for approval.

The Delta Visiting Chair was originally established as the Delta Prize for Global Understanding in 1997 through the generous support of The Delta Air Lines Foundation, with the purpose of advancing understanding and cooperation among cultures and nations. The Delta Prize for Global Understanding was presented to individuals whose initiatives have helped promote world peace, including Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ted Turner, Desmond Tutu and Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter. The Delta Prize transitioned to the Delta Visiting Chair for Global Understanding, as approved by the Board of Regents, in 2014. The inaugural Delta Visiting Chair was held by Alice Walker in 2015.

 

Call for proposals: Faculty of all ranks from multiple disciplines are invited to apply, and interdisciplinary teams are encouraged. The engagement of student researchers at both the graduate and undergraduate level also is encouraged. Research funds should be used to directly support research activities of the UGA faculty/teams submitting proposals. Funds must be spent at UGA and may be used to buy out faculty time, compensate students working on the project, secure or develop research materials, or cover the cost of publication. Funds may not be used to pay for research already completed.

The research initiative is being funded by up to $100,000 in private discretionary funds from the Office of the President. Funds will be made available as soon as possible after selection of the winning proposal(s), and should be expended by June 30, 2021. It is an expectation that the resulting research will generate one or more scholarly publications.

Proposal submission: Proposals should be submitted to the Office of Research via the Proposal Submission Form no later than Monday, September 30, 2019. Late proposals will not be considered. Proposals, submitted as a single PDF, should include:

• Title Page, listing:
  • Project title;
  • Name, affiliation, and email address of the contact faculty member;
  • Name, affiliation, and email address of all other UGA faculty members (if a team), as well as external experts (if relevant).
• Description of the research project, including how the work will be accomplished and by whom, not to exceed three single-spaced pages with a minimum 11-point font and 1-inch margins.
• An Itemized budget, using this form.

 

Contact email for questions: alexaspley1@uga.edu

John H. Morrow, Jr., professor in the UGA department of history, has been named the 13th recipient of the Pritzker Military Museum & Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing:

The Pritzker Literature Award—which includes a gold medallion, citation, and $100,000 honorarium—recognizes and honors the contributions of a living author for a body of work dedicated to enriching the understanding of military history and affairs. Museum & Library Founder & Chair Jennifer N. Pritzker, a retired colonel in the Illinois National Guard, will formally present Morrow with the award at the organization’s annual Liberty Gala on November 2 at the Hilton Chicago, where he will be joined by past recipients.

“I am truly honored to accept the 2019 Pritzker Military Museum & Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing,” said Dr. Morrow. “Receiving the award after nearly fifty years of historical writing, teaching, and consulting constitutes the ultimate affirmation of my career as a scholar of the history of modern war and society.”

Author or co-author of 8 publications, Morrow is an accomplished military historian and respected professor. His work includes The Great War: An Imperial History, The Great War in the Air, Harlem’s Rattlers and the Great War (co-authored with Jeffrey T. Sammons) and German Airpower in World War I, among others. He has gained recognition for his ability to demonstrate how the past and the present intertwine inextricably.

“The screening committee’s recommendations and Colonel Pritzker’s selection speaks to Dr. Morrow’s years of dedication to the field of Military History,” stated Dr. Rob Havers, President and CEO of the Pritzker Military Museum & Library. “For the depth of his writing and research, his years of dedication and service to the field of military history, for his academic achievements including his commitment to shaping the minds of the next generation of military historians, Dr. Morrow stands as a deserving recipient of the 2019 Pritzker Military Museum & Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. We are grateful for his devotion to the field and are proud to shine a light on his exemplary work in military history.”

In addition to his many accomplishments and honors throughout a stellar academic career, Morrow is a member of the Willson Center’s Board of Friends. His recent collaborations with the Willson Center include his curation of a 2017 speaker series on the United States in World War I; his moderating of a panel discussion with the musician Kishi Bashi on Japanese-American incarceration during World War II for the spring 2018 Global Georgia Initiative; and a symposium commemorating the centennial of World War I which he co-organized at Georgia Tech in fall 2018.

The Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and the Willson Center at UGA have partnered with the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame to present the second annual Seminar in Transnational European Studies June 2-9 in Berlin.

The seminar, made possible through generous support by the Max Kade Foundation, aims to expand knowledge and understanding of transnational Europe among U.S.-based scholars, advancing the discourse on campus on issues related to Europe, the EU, and Germany’s role in the European Union. Within this larger context, the seminar hopes to initiate new research projects and curricular innovation, including collaboration between faculty from the two participating institutions.

Included among the seminar’s week of events are two that will be open to the public: a panel on “European Journalism: Challenges, Threats, and Global Context” with Tom Nuttall (Berlin bureau chief, The Economist, Germany), Adam Nossiter (Paris bureau chief, The New York Times, France), and Katya Gorchinskaya (journalist and former CEO of Hromadske Television, Ukraine); and “Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain,” a talk by Fintan O’Toole (author and commentator, Ireland).

The seminar is directed by Martin Kagel, A.G. Steer Professor of German and associate dean in the Franklin College, William C. Donahue, the Rev. John C. Cavanaugh, C.S.C., Professor of the Humanities and director of the Nanovic Institute, and Nicholas Allen, Abraham Baldwin Professor in Humanities and director of the Willson Center.

A full schedule and more information are available at the conference website.

The Willson Center received a three-year, $500,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2018 for the expansion of its Global Georgia Initiative, a public humanities program in place since 2013. One of the core developments that followed was the creation of an annual symposium to amplify and share ideas for engaged humanities research from a diverse community of academic leaders.

The first Georgia Humanities Symposium was held on Friday, March 8, 2019 in the Georgia Museum of Art on the UGA campus, in partnership with Georgia Humanities. The symposium’s three panel discussions included participants from state, regional, and national institutions including Georgia Tech, Morehouse College, the University of North Carolina, the National Humanities Alliance, the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes, and the High Museum of Art. Videos of the panels are posted below.

The symposium was illustrative of a movement toward strengthening connections among humanities institutions nationally, and sharing strategies for involving local communities as partners in resource building and research.

Humanities Indicators, a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has recently published its National Inventory of Humanities Organizations, a database encompassing more than 45,000 “not-for-profit, for-profit, and government institutions engaged in humanities scholarship and/or in bringing humanities knowledge or skills to various audiences.” And the NHA’s Humanities for All website catalogs more than 1,400 publicly engaged humanities initiatives nationwide and more than 40 in Georgia, including several that were represented at the symposium.

One of those is the Columbus Community Geography Center at Columbus State University, coordinated by Amanda Rees, who participated in the panel on “Georgia and the Public Humanities.”

Rees and student researchers in the center use academic resources and methods in collaboration with community members on projects such as a historical map to help develop a historic district nomination for a formerly segregated, post-World War II African American subdivision in Columbus. “When we can use our tools to help tell that story, that’s really pretty important,” she said during the panel. “To help people understand what they’re looking at, and not just see it in one way.”

Mark Wilson, director of Auburn University’s Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities, was one of the more than 80 humanities research leaders who attended the symposium. “I was challenged to think about our community relationships and partnerships in a new way,” he said, “and I believe this gathering made a contribution to everyone who attended.”

“Every project that was shared in Athens expands the number and range of people who have experienced and benefitted from the humanities,” wrote Daniel Fisher, a project director at the National Humanities Alliance Foundation, in a blog post on the NHA’s website.

Vicki L. Crawford, director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection and associate professor of African American Studies at Morehouse College, served as moderator on the symposium’s third panel on next steps for public humanities initiatives in Georgia. “As we face the challenges of our times, the humanities will continue to play a central role in American life and culture,” she said. “Our recent gathering was especially enriching and certain to generate new collaborations and partnerships among a diverse array of humanities educators and advocates throughout the state.”

The Willson Center is currently planning the 2020 Georgia Humanities Symposium, which will be held next spring.

 

Introductions

Nicholas Allen (Director, Willson Center) and Libby Morris (Interim Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, UGA)

Panel One: Georgia and The Public Humanities

Chair: Stephen Berry (UGA)

Edward Hatfield (New Georgia Encyclopedia)

Ann McCleary (University of West Georgia, West Georgia Textile Heritage Trail)

Amanda Rees (Columbus State)

Avis Williams (Putnam County School System)

 

 

Panel Two: Making Connections

Chair: William Warner (CHCI)

Rand Suffolk (High Museum)

Jeanne Bohannon (Kennesaw University)

Robyn Schroeder (UNC)

Brian Orland (UGA)

 

 

Panel Three: Next Steps

Chair: Vicki Crawford (Morehouse)

Kelly Caudle (Georgia Humanities)

Jacqueline Jones Royster (Georgia Tech)

Barbara McCaskill (UGA)

Daniel Fisher (NHA)

Closing Remarks

Nicholas Allen (Director, Willson Center)

 

 

 

 

Rebecca Rutstein, the Willson Center’s 2018-2019 Delta Visiting Chair for Global Understanding, is an artist whose work spans painting, sculpture, installation, and public art and explores abstraction inspired by science, data and maps.

The Willson Center’s 2019 Global Georgia Initiative visiting speaker series began this February with public talks by author Jeff VanderMeer and historian and Ferdinand Phinizy Lecturer Stephanie McCurry. The series continues with a panel discussion on the removal of monuments in the global south featuring a presentation by South African photographer Christo Doherty on April 10, the Betty Jean Craige Annual Lecture in Comparative Literature by novelist NoViolet Bulawayo on April 15, and the Georgia Review Earth Day Lecture by the renowned environmental author Barry Lopez on April 22.

McCurry’s lecture can be viewed here.

The spring issue of Research magazine, published by the UGA Office of Research, includes an excellent article by Allyson Mann on 2018-2019 Delta Visiting Chair Rebecca Rutstein and her partnership with UGA oceanographer Samantha Joye. Read the magazine feature and stay tuned for video of Rutstein and Joye’s second Delta Chair conversation on the confluence of art and science, which took place March 28. Their first conversation, at November’s national conference of the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru), can be viewed here.

Columbia University historian Stephanie McCurry visited the University of Georgia to give the department of history’s Ferdinand Phinizy Lecture, an event in the Willson Center’s Global Georgia Initiative. McCurry’s talk, which took place Feb. 22 in the Seney-Stovall Chapel, was also part of the university’s Signature Lectures series.

McCurry is the R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History in Honor of Dwight D. Eisenhower at Columbia. Her areas of research include the United States in the 19th century, the American South, the American Civil War, and the history of women and gender. She is the author of Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country (1995) and Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South, (2010), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for history.

Rebecca Rutstein, an artist whose work spans painting, sculpture, installation and public art, exploring abstraction inspired by science, data and maps, is UGA’s 2018-2019 Delta Visiting Chair for Global Understanding. She returns to UGA and Athens for her second visit of the academic year March 27-28 for events including a public conversation at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 28, with a reception beginning at 6 p.m.

Rutstein’s return visit follows her keynote discussion at November’s national conference of the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru). Rutstein will again give a public presentation with oceanographer Samantha Joye, Athletic Association Professor in Arts and Sciences in the marine sciences department of UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

The conversation, titled “Expeditions, Experiments and the Ocean: Adventures and Discoveries,” will be held in the M. Smith Griffith Auditorium of the Georgia Museum of Art. It will be moderated by Nicholas Allen, Franklin Professor of English and director of the Willson Center.

In addition to her conversation with Joye and Allen, Rutstein will give a talk at Creature Comforts Brewing Co. in downtown Athens at 4 p.m. Wednesday, March 27 as part of Creature Comforts’ Get Artistic initiative. Please RSVP for the talk if you plan to attend.

The Delta Visiting Chair, established by the Willson Center through the support of The Delta Air Lines Foundation, hosts outstanding global scholars, leading creative thinkers, artists and intellectuals who participate in public events at UGA and in the Athens community.

Since Rutstein’s November visit, she and Joye have completed an expedition to Mexico’s Guaymas Basin in the Sea of Cortez that included a deep-sea dive aboard Alvin, a submersible vessel able to withstand the crushing pressure of the extremes of the deep ocean. While scientists explored hydrothermal vents and carbon cycling processes in the basin, Rutstein set up her studio on the ship and created new works inspired by the data collected in real time.

Athens-Clarke County public middle school students will visit the Georgia Museum of Art for a presentation and Q&A with Rutstein during her visit. Eight new paintings by Rutstein inspired by the expedition are now on display at the museum. Rutstein’s 64-foot-long interactive sculptural installation and a monumental four-part painting remain installed at the museum as well, and a mural-sized banner is on display at the Lamar Dodd School of Art.

In the process of creating works inspired by geology, microbiology and marine science, Rutstein has previously collaborated with scientists aboard research vessels sailing from the Galapagos Islands to California, Vietnam to Guam, and in the waters surrounding Tahiti. Prior to her expedition with Joye, she made her first descent in Alvin to the ocean floor off the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica with a team of scientists from Temple University in October 2018.

Rutstein has exhibited in museums, institutions and galleries, and has received numerous awards including the prestigious Pew Fellowship in the Arts. 

Joye’s research examines the complex feedback that drive elemental cycling in coastal and open ocean environments, and the effects of climate change and anthropogenic disturbances on critical environmental processes to gain a better understanding of how changes will affect ecosystem functioning.